Youtube Video

Posted on July 11, 2010 by AlbinoGrimby

Now that I’ve got an iPhone 4 and I can take 720p video, I’m interested in seeing what I can post on Youtube and on this blog.

As a first test, this video isn’t taken with my iPhone, but rather my Canon A480 P&S camera. It’s a stop-motion animation of a Nanoblock 5-story Pagoda I bought while I was in Japan. I figured this would be a good test case.

Some lessons learned about uploading to Youtube:

I’m using iMovie on the Mac for starters. It doesn’t export H.264 but just a QT .MOV format. If you want to edit short videos with iMovie and expect to upload it to YouTube at 720p you’re out of luck. Youtube hates that. Every time I tried to upload from iMovie it would compress it down to crap. Even if I took the exported MOV file and uploaded it Youtube complained that it wasn’t in the right format and yet tried to work with the data anyway, but the end result was less than stellar.

So here’s what I did: I edited and exported my movie with iMovie as a Quicktime MOV format. I downloaded Handbrake and re-compressed the MOV into an H.264 MP4 file and I uploaded that to Youtube. Youtube still bitched about the audio not being correct and begrudgingly munched on the data anyway and uploaded it. Since there’s no audio, I didn’t give a rat’s ass and you can see the video here.

I want to try and upload a video from my iPhone to Youtube next and I’ll post something about that on here. I’d also like it if WordPress 3.0 with all its new-fangled capabilities to show the embedded Youtube or let me upload video to the blog itself, but the latter seems to be a no-go. From my experience it’s simply broken. I don’t know if that’s because my webhost can’t handle it, or if WordPress is a pile. Maybe it doesn’t like you uploading a 720p video. Maybe there’s some hidden MB cap that I need to increase before it’ll take the entire file. The Nanoblock video is 29 MBs so I figure it’s giving WordPress a heart attack about 40% of the way through (that’s how far it gets before it croaks).

Daily Digest for July 5th

Posted on July 5, 2010 by AlbinoGrimby

	Shared 4 photos. Rocks Flower
	Shared .
	Queued 64 videos. Blood+: Part 1 Doctor Who: The City of Death Someday’s Dreamers: Vol. 3: Precious Feelings Pandorum Doctor Who: The Invasion of Time: Disc 2 The Nest My Beautiful Girl Mari The Kingdom Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy: Disc 2 Ballerina High Kick Girl! Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy: Disc 3 Someday’s Dreamers: Vol. 2: Power of Love Strawberry Panic: Vol. 3: Third Wheel The Men Who Stare at Goats Strawberry Panic: Vol. 2: Second Star Doctor Who: The Invasion of Time: Disc 1 Tactics: Vol. 1 Survivors: Series 1: Disc 1 Red Cliff: Original International Version: Part 1 The Avengers ’67 Doctor Who: The Masque of Mandragora Someday’s Dreamers: Vol. 1: Magical Dreamer Strawberry Panic: Vol. 5: Fifth Waltz I.M. Pei Dhoom 2 Raging Phoenix Doctor Who: The Deadly Assassin The Olympic Century: Disc 1 The Informant! Hercules The Wrestler Air: The Motion Picture Russian Ark The Olympic Century: Disc 2 Independent Lens: Between the Folds Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth Red Cliff: Original International Version: Part 2 Moon Planet B-Boy Show Me Love Strawberry Panic: Vol. 1: First Kiss Tarzan Doctor Who: The Brain of Morbius Ong Bak 2: The Beginning Neon Genesis Evangelion: The End of Evangelion Olympic Winter Games 2006: Competition Ladies Malice@Doll Strawberry Panic: Vol. 4: Fourth Refrain The Departed Red Cliff: Theatrical Version Death Note: Re-light: L’s Successors Spring and Chaos Doctor Who: The E-Space Trilogy: Disc 1 Women in Trouble The Hunchback of Notre Dame When They Cry Spartacus: Blood and Sand Survivors: Series 1: Disc 2 Planet of the Apes Paper Clips Survivors: Series 1: Disc 3 (500) Days of Summer Bitch Slap
	Queued Tales from the Script.

iPhone Impressions

Posted on July 2, 2010 by AlbinoGrimby

I’ve got an iPhone now and I just wanted to write some quick impressions I have about it. Yes, I am blogging this from the phone itself using the WordPress app. While I’m doing this I have iTunes running in the background. I got the 32GB model so it fits all of my music and I still have room for a bunch of stuff – apps, pictures, videos, you name it.

How well does it work as a phone? I’ve already had one dropped call due to the antenna issue that everyone is talking about. I got a third-party bumper/case but it doesn’t seem to help. I hope it helps protect the phone at least.

The screen really is amazing. I visited my blog and even though the text came up microscopic it was totally readable to me. We’re talking about text that is 2 pixels high that on the old screen would be complete garbage. Color me impressed. I think it really is as hyped up as Steve Jobs put it. Or, I have really bad eyesight, but I definitely can’t see pixels. Most of the time. I tried opera mini and the text actually didn’t look that great when browsing webpages.

The video camera suffers from a bit of jellyvision but I’ve notices that any portable HD camera seems to suffer the same fate. I tried the Kodak flip type camcorder and if you make any sudden moves the frame starts to wiggle like jello.

The still camera and flash aren’t bad at all. It seems to have a pretty decent macro mode. If I can insert an image into this blog post then I can show you the result of some low light photography with this thing. I can also show you the new addition to my growing Marimite figurine collection. (update: looks like I can since it attaches the image to the bottom of the post.)

The monthly cost is going to be a killer but if that’s the case I want to find ways to enrich my life by using this technology. I don’t mean just using this thing to play games, but to use it to learn and create new things and to use this as a separate brain to augment my own. It might be a closed platform, but it is still a computer at the end of the day.

And if you’re wondering about the keyboard and typing on this thing you can do it and type at a pretty fast clip. Apple’s got some predictive algorithm running so your fat fingers (like mine) can jam on all the keys it wants and still come out with the right word most of the time. Works better long-ways though. Not as cramped and you can type with both thumbs, but you hands will get cramped after a while.

Update: the multitasking works. I’m writing this post in the WordPress blog app and viewing the end product in Safari at the same time. Also, still playing music over the speaker. Yes, it is eating battery life like candy but this is a pretty intense use of this machine. I’ll be taking it through its paces this weekend. If you’re interested it ate 10% just writing this blog entry with music at near full volume playing in the background.